Monthly Archives: April 2013

It is getting warmer at last and each day the plants are fluffing out into bigger areas and I always forget that ~ I have a tendency to cram in as many little beauties as possible ….and then have to transplant them, which is a pattern of mine 🙂

Yesterday it was also Capricorn moon and I spent a lot of time on moving things around to accommodate new plans ~ one of which was incorporating the muck the we collected last week which is still rotting down. The Robin was close by watching this process ~ always reminds me of my Grandad who I spent my first gardening time and discovery with ~ a fellow Leo .

Today we are hoping to take our next step on enlarging our growing space with confirmation from the person that owns it.

It is a serendipitous day ~ Red Crystal Earthin the Mayan calendar ~ it is also energetically a very powerful galactic portal day ~ time to crystallise all that we have learned in the past eleven days. It is a wonderful time to connect with all in the cosmos ~ to let go of any linear limitation and to unearth our often hidden strength ~ our heart wisdom .

What can happen when we let go of our mind leading the way and be stuck in a groove ~ and be open to new ideas?

I am learning lots of new things now and one major shift in my gardening is using the moon to enhance my alignment with planting with the cycles ~ instead of merely planting with the sun and my whim ~ a great metaphor in itself ~ letting go of being masculine head drive and bringing myself into balance.

I am tuning in to cosmic guidance ~ my intuition and following the cosmic cookie trail.

We have only lived in this place for one season and there was an empty canvas to work with. I have brought some plants from the north that seem to be settling in ~ much warmer and drier start for them this year and they are loving that .

I have created a space outside for my many bean plants ~ they were covering every available light space indoors until frost recedes ~ now I have a few outside in my mini greenhouses ~ it is still a tad risky though 🙂 I am feeling there may be a Jack and the beanstalk adventure 🙂

I am also planting peas ~ beans haven’t been high on the menu in the past ~ remnants of bean experiences at school that I didn’t relish as a child, put me off them except for the tinned variety. I am now exploring lots of options with new recipes and new knowledge about how to use them and what they offer.

I am creating a structure and using the three sistersroutine ~ instantly reminds me of the White Christmas routine with Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby ~ always a family ritual for me as a child watching the film with my Mum and Nan ……..love how we link up to our childhood structures in everything we create .

Today’s pic isn’t my structure ~ I haven’t got the space for this at the moment but it really inspired me as a future possibility and I loved discovering lots of ideas in writing this blog today ~ takes me on a journey of discovery ~ loved the Yorkshire Sculpture Parkfor this ~ living structures we can get inside ~ reminds me of den building as a child too.

Creating dens out in the woods , in your bedroom, in the garden with anything and everything like a magpie collecting treasure. I used to use my Nan’s big wooden clothes maiden which I still had until very recently.

As a child I used to cover it in old blankets that were from the Navy and the second world war.

I often took things from the house ~ much to my Nan’s chagrin. She didn’t like the worms I put in her pinnie pocket either 🙂

I loved getting the tent out ~ each year that was a ritual for me ~ confirmation that summer had arrived. It smelt musty like the wooden garage ~ a man made artifice amongst the smell of freshly mowed grass and strong smelling flowers. It was strongly connected to feel good times and so an instant anchor to them. The nose is such a potent time travel portal.

So this year I am going to create a three sister’s structure ~ again a very Mayan linkage. This involves corn, beans and squash creating a structure together.

Capricorn moon

Very apt for creating structure and with the principle of what we are doing…..

we are being……..

we are having…….

We are creating our universe through our structure in action.

Capricorn is about skeleton, bones and skin ~ how we stand in the world and how we receive it through our biggest organ ~ the skin. The skin is our fence and our boundary between ourselves and the world we live in. The spine is what supports this structure and our staff of life, tree of life, our magician’s wand.

Capricorn is the hardy goat that strides ahead Julie Andrew’s style ~ climb every mountain ~ to see what is at the top.

It is also a sign that is very practical and focuses on this ~ often avoiding feelings in the process and this is the major challenge of the Capricorn as it is the disciple and the spiritual seeker.

Vegetables that are associated with Capricorn ~

Root crops are best planted in a waning moon ~ now 🙂 As the moon pull is receding this allows the process of putting down good roots, grounding, going within energy

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, radish,parsnip

Capricorn Waning moon for holistic rejuvenation

It is a great time for a detox and letting go at this time. Going within, rest and recuperation ~ not the time for mountain climbing and putting pressure on our skeleton . We are in the third quarter of the moon so time to integrate all that started in the first quarter with the new moon and the build up in the big Scorpio full moon and eclipse that we have just gone through. Time to let it go and be released.

This moon is earthy and dry and likes structure ~ if that is your moon that reflects your feminine sideand mother archetypes. If it is your sun sign this can reveal the shadow side.

A sprinkling of good old Will today ~

an ode from Will Shakespeare

Othello

Our bodies are our gardens, to the which

our wills are gardeners; so that if we will

plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop

and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender

of herbs or distract it with many~

either to have it sterile with idleness

or manured with industry ~

why, the power and corrigible authority

of this lies in our wills

I do my my walking meditation in my gardening and my exercise in this earthly gym …….and sometimes I sit and I breathe in the heady aroma of my beautiful , bountiful fragrant friends.

What more do we need than to sow and to weed ?

Love to you and your structures today. May they build lovely arbours of light and shade.

It was a Virgo moon yesterday. The perfect day for being earthy and collecting some wonderful manure that will feed our lovely plants. Today in Libra moon it’s the perfect time for planting above ground plants ~ careful if all frost has gone which it hasn’t here yet 🙂 It is a beautiful blue sky day ~ yea 🙂

Our manure came from an animal sanctuary nearby that rescues all sorts of animals . The manure we have collected comes from pigs and sheep who came to have a close inspection of us as we were removing their excess products 🙂

The picture I have posted today isn’t of one of the actual donating pigs ~ a similar breed. Hope to get some pics in future to put on the blog when I have had a chat to the owner of the sanctuary about how they feel about publicity ~ yesterday it was raining and I had manure on my hands so I deferred from getting my phone out for a photo shoot and concentrated on the job at hand whilst encountering nosy sheep inspecting our bags :-)…….

The manure we have collected comes from animals that are free from any chemical additives ~ they do not take antibiotics and some of them are there because they weren’t big enough for food production ~ hence being rescued. The ground that they live on isn’t treated with pesticides either and that is very important. I was recently labelled a purist by someone who lives locally who was looking for people to grow food on her land. She wanted to use round up on couch grass saying it only acts in isolation and when asked my opinion I said I didn’t want to use any poisons in any way on any land period. Needless to say we didn’t go ahead with a joint project. It is something I feel strongly about and having grown veg and plants for several years on an allotment I choose to find a natural way to learn about what is out of balance on the land I am cultivating ~ because that is always reflecting something in me. I am not separate from anything in my life and neither is anyone or anything else …..everything is connected.

It is really important to think the whole thing through about everything that goes into the growing recipe and we can ask questions to do this and learn as part of the process ~ I forgot to ask initially about this. I noticed how in the last month of Aries I felt really impatient to get things going and have to be focused and disciplined with working at the aligned time if I want to get the outcome of optimising this system. My ego child wants to do it ~ now ~ 🙂

When I asked the question about what the animals are given I learned something new ~ they have a natural product to assist with worms ~ which is called VermX~ not heard of that before. Just want to add that I have no connection with any of the websites I post in terms of any financial benefit of posting them. My intention is simply to share my journey with my readers so please take your own journey if you decide to follow any of these paths and ensure it is the well-being way for you as it may not be 🙂

It is tricky with the UK weather to work with this system of moon cycles as the weather can be so changeable and if we get a sunny day I want to go out and plant regardless 🙂 I know though that working with these rhythms is so worth it for the most important plant in my life ~ me 🙂 This way of being is changing me and without me this creativity ceases to be. This is something everyone can value ~ putting ourselves first and being the change we want to see.

Everything in the nature of recycling is the key to our evolution now. How often do we simply use a linear process and overlook the benefits of everything that we create?

A dung heap gives off tremendous energy that can be tapped into as an organic generator to power equipment for example ~ it can heat unused beds ready for the next stage, it can be piled next to a greenhouse or poly tunnel to create natural warmth. Insects love it.

Our manure can be used in the same way and many people use composting toilets without harvesting their full potential ~ they are mini generators and do not have to be passive. Reed beds are fab ~ and take quite a long time to filter sewage which has to be very in balance proportionally with what goes in and amount of reeds and area to cope with it.

If you think of these huge sewage plants that add water and chemicals and stir things around…….

Each home could have it’s own mini generator recycling excess product and it being a true circle of recycling everything instead of one way traffic ……

Our manure isn’t quite ready for use yet as it isn’t simply earth so needs to break down more otherwise the chemical reactions that happen in the breaking down process can damage the plants and burn them.

It’s interesting to see how much excess product we have created too as a way of seeing how efficient the food we are eating is.

I noticed this with my cats as a few years ago I learned about factory produced food and started feeding my cats chicken and fish with olive oil and sunflower seeds instead. I was really shocked at what I learned about some commercial food and saw the affects on my maturing cats.

We don’t do vaccinations in any of our family including my animal ones and this came about over lots of experiential learning which actually started when I got one of my cats from a professor in immunology who I used to pet sit for ~ synchronistically at the perfect time when I had young children and had a vaccination experience with my first born. The perfect person to ask showed up in my life. She didn’t vaccinate herself and often went into the Amazon to do research which I thought was an interesting contrast. She didn’t have children but said if she did she wouldn’t vaccinate ~ I also found a book “What doctor’s don’t tell you” when I was petsitting for a family for a couple of weeks. This really opened my eyes and made sense of so many things ~ remembering my heart wisdom.

How many of us have a corporate role that we choose not to bring home and is simply a front we wear ~ just like a phone app?

My business at that time was based around sanctuaries and rescued animals and people who recognised that many “diseases” found in kennels such as cat flu and kennel cough were actually a result of stress that their pets experienced being away from their home and family.

When my cats ate factory food they produced lots of waste product that was really revolting

On ordinary food they have very little waste product at all and the smell is vastly reduced.

What a fascinating subject isn’t it and hence the title of the blog ~ a northern saying ~

Where there’s muck there’s brass~ totally true. Meaning on a literal level where there is muck there is the potential to make money ~ brass. The alchemy process turning lead into gold.

In the earth we live and grow in and in our shadow selves too. Dung beetles travelling over the milky way in ancient symbolic wisdom.

The most wonderfully fecund time of the gardening calendar.

Time to plant those seeds both in the garden and in our wider world.
How are we inspiring ourselves and shining brightly ?
How are we sowing the seeds of love in our own personal garden…..and in the process
creating more nurturing feminine energy in our world ?Anything invested in the undeveloped ego has an outcome that is the opposite of true love and harmony
as it is a pattern ~ a seed ~ of feathering an ego’s own nest
to create proof of it’s worthiness outside of itself 🙂

That isn’t good or bad ~ it is all part of the process and the journey of learning

At this Aries sun time we can see how we are sending shoots out for new growth for all of humanity……

Everything that has ever happened has brought us to where we are today……

What we take from that learning is key for our future creativity ♥

Gardening Update:

Yesterday I was emptying out my shed and looking at my seed trays
Pondering on what worked and didn’t work last year……
Getting my mini greenhouses ready ~ rather windy today and one has fallen over so I need to bear this in mind with the polytunnel and geodesic dome.

Here is another inspiring video I found about using resources in different ways ~
we could excavate a hole in the ground to expand the space and create a thermal bank of water to provide a humid all year round climate.http://gardenpool.org/
Here’s a great site I found for gardening by the moon with some more information and background about how people have learned about the moon and it’s energetic effects in the past.

Food today

I have a sugar addiction and am weaning myself off it substituting sugar with honey and fruit ~ work in progress 🙂 Not had an orange kit kat in several days ~ still feel the pull 🙂

Experimenting with lots of different beans and combinations.

My favourite sweet tooth treat today was fresh ripe pineapple ~ it is important that the fruit is ripe for maximum energetic delivery 🙂 Otherwise our body uses energy to process it. I dry roasted some pistachios and ground them up and sprinkled them on top ~ gorgeous yellow fruit. Perfect for my solar ~ plexus area which will be affected ~ the pancreas ~ if I keep loading highly processed sugars in it’s general direction. Pancreas say no 🙂

Colloidal silver update:

Been on it now for a week on a high dosage and for the first few days I was backing that up with bicarb of soda to balance my ph. Without too much micro detail ~ leave it for your imagination ~ bicarb of soda gives explosive results…..mmmmm…..works though.

Been having a healing crisis and still experiencing aching and inflammatory feelings in my sacral and base chakra areas ~ noticing what foods are exacerbating this too. A hottie water bottle works wonders as well as using dead sea salt laced with benzoin and marjoram and some splashes of lavender and geranium oils.

I am feeling very different ~ hard to explain ~ better though and am decreasing my dosage to a low level over the next few days as a supplementary immunity ~ bit like an external hard drive for my mac 🙂

We went on a family trip to the Eden Project last weekend~ you can see the pics here on my Facebook account. That brightened us all up ~ being surrounded by living plants. In winter we don’t have this green resource and sun resource ( not often in summer lately either 🙂 ) and so our ability to raise our vibe in our environment becomes diminished ~ even more important to detox now and holistically cleanse all our receptors so we can uplift our vitality on all levels.

I am learning to garden with the moon and by doing so get in synch with the natural ebb and flow of our universe.

Today I have been inspired to cook soups and I like to cook them in the oven using metal containers as this gives an alchemical flavour to the process.

All cooking is a form of alchemy as we take raw ingredients and transform them into something else using a process . If you roast vegetables in oil without much liquid the flavour is very different to cooking them on top of the oven and in water.

I love Indian cooking and have used Madhur Jaffrey’s recipes for years. When I worked in pubs I learned lots of techniques and recipes and collected local ones whenever possible. One of the key things then, was cooking in advance and in bulk ,which I found pretty joyless after a while 🙂 I also used microwaves to match the fast food ethos of that time but I haven’t had one of those for years. When we lived in Cumbria we made most of our food fresh for each day and asked our customers to be patient as quality tasty food takes time and patience and…..it takes as long as it takes. I love to take my learning from the past and let go of what no longer serves me ~ I love to have variety and quality rather than quick quantity 🙂 I believe the sacred in our lives is the common daily process and the more joy we bring to them , the more we experience heart living.

Cooking with Indian herbs and spices really enhances the flavours and brings out the wonder of vegetables……involves many processes and requires many pots so an assistant washer upper is an advantage. It is worth the extra cleaning. Using herbs for health is a very natural way of being in everyday life in India and is also incorporated into the Ayurvedic principles of health.

As we all seem to have so much to fit into a day now , as the food is cooking away in the oven , we can be getting on with other things ~ such as growing the food that will be future soup. Home made food that is created with love is one of the key steps to nurturing our bodies. It forms the substance of healthy living.

So many of these herbs are great for reducing anything inflammatory in the system . The more we tune in to hearing what our body needs and the healthier we become.

Today I felt inspired to create :

Mushroom and garlic soup with thyme and a splash of white wine

Put all ingredients in a metal pan with a lid according to how much you wish to make ~ I used a small punnet of white mushrooms and four large cloves of garlic , coarse sea salt, black pepper and a splash of wine, a smattering of olive oil and a sprinkling of dried thyme. Cook on low heat for about half an hour until mushrooms are cooked through, cool, blend with blender then add a veg stock or milk and a dollup of cream or if you don’t want dairy use a non dairy ingredient such as soya or coconut milk.

Squash, sweet potato and red pepper soup

Roast slices of the vegetables in olive oil according to the amount you wish to create in a metal container with lid.

Add some garlic cloves, a smattering of cumin seeds, cumin powder and turmeric with a couple of bay leaves and coarse salt and black pepper.

Cook on low for about an hour and stir vegetables to ensure they don’t dry out.

When soft, allow to cool and remove the skin if need be ( sometimes it doesn’t blend well ).

Blend and add some vegetable stock to the consistency you require.

This bubbles like a mud geyser so be careful ~ totally warms from the inside out and if you require more lava effect add some chilli 🙂

Great when you need warming after an afternoon on the allotment.

New Potato and leek mash up

Chop some potatoes and leeks and put in a metal container and lid. Add some oil and butter or substitute if non dairy.

A lot can be gleaned simply by looking at the colour and shape of any plant.

Orange ~ Sacral chakra

Round ~ feminine yin

Cylindrical ~ more towards yang energy and masculine

Grown below ground ~ feminine yin

Above ground ~ more masculine yang

Great gardening activities in Taurus Waxing Moon time:

Waxing moon is when the moon is increasing which starts around new moon time. We have just had new moon in Aries and today we are in Taurus.

To find out what moon sign it is you can use this great website:

Lunarium

When the moon is waxing it is energising and this is very different to waning energy which is generally a relaxing and letting go time.

If you think of this in terms of a breath cycle:

When the moon is waxing we are breathing in and our lungs are expanding.

When the moon is waning we are breathing out ~ exhaling and releasing.

This is an amazing exciting area I am feeling very enthused with at the moment and I will be sharing my learning on this and how we can use this knowledge in a practical way to co create with our universe.

It is a good time to plant annuals today generally speaking ~ however there may still be risk of a frost so I’m holding back on that in the garden.

Taurus is an earth feminine sign and therefore yin plants that grow under ground ( Root veggies) are associated with Taurus:

Sweet Potatoes

Potatoes

Carrots

Parsnips

Beetroot

These are best planted at a waning moon time so not today 🙂 We are in waxing for approximately 14 days and so in approximately a couple of weeks we are going into this time period.

Harvesting, canning and pickling are good today

I am getting ready to plant some seeds as I am hoping to get my first polytunnel soon ~ next tuesday is a very auspicious day for this as the moon is in Cancer.

I am visiting the Eden project in Cornwall soon so hopefully pick up some inspiration from there too.

Taurus Moon for our health.

In my other blog ~ flow with jo ~ I have spoken about issues with my teeth and decided to trial colloidal silver .

I ordered it yesterday and serendipitously it has arrived today at the perfect time for using it in Taurus Moon

I took my first dose today. Will keep you posted.

Anything that is to be ingested and taken in is a energetically aligned today ~ however if I was having an extraction of a tooth I would be better to wait to a waning time as there would be less blood loss ~ all fluids rise with the waxing moon until they peak at full moon , this is also true of emotions.

Here is an interesting article about how the sun and moon affect our inner cycles and the production of colloidal silver

Lots of ideas coming in now. Still not sure on the site yet as question marks over whether we can use the land at the back of our house. There are a couple of options coming up nearby that may be possible and I am open to creating something new ~ bearing in mind that we tend to create the same pattern so it will be interesting to see how that emerges. I have a variety of these possibilities based on gardens, projects and my allotment in Marsden.

I am hoping to twin up with that space in the very near future to create a joint community project both in the North and the South of the UK ~ seeing how the different weather and patterns of the land create a different climate.

The intention behind the project is to share the love of the land and create new inspiration for people to reconnect with their innate knowledge and skill of co creating with nature for well being and having fun doing it.

I have enquired about recycling polytunnels in my locality of Somerset but nothing back on that yet so still looking. I have looked at a brand new model too and a big part of me is saying no because…….they aren’t circles 🙂 Plus we are just going to buy it and that seems to be out of alignment with the whole bigger picture so now we are opening up to different ideas.

For a long time now I have wanted a geodesic dome. Reading about Buckminster Fullerand this sacred geometry design really set my heart on fire .

I found these videos today on youtube and I am sharing them with you. I have a feeling we may be embarking on a building a dome project and…..

I like the look of a few of these other powering devices and using plastic bottles too. That feels so much more exciting than buying an off the shelf model and already I am thinking about what could be possible?

This video also really inspired us and we are not religious in any way ~ my take is that we are being guided by the universe as to remembering who we really are as part of the universe. It is time to reconnect to the sacred in us and work with our goddess energy to empower ourselves on all levels.